Ankle locks

A wounded deer leaps the highest.  -Emily Dickinson


Lunchtime BJJ at GB Belle. Hostility Boy! Yay. He will be here through Tuesday. Let's see if I can avoid working with that ripe boil for six days.

Knee seemed okay today. Ribs hurt, but in a different place this time, so that's a plus. I have a minor finger sprain, rt hand. Didn't hamper me.

Standup: Opponent L kicks at you, a pendulum-like redneck-in-a-bar-fight kick. You parry with R arm and turn L, then turn back and strike at face with L elbow.

Now- same kick. You grab leg (on the outside), grab opponent around waist to control hips, step back, kneel and drop. Side control.

Positional training:

Begin lying on your backs side by side. On go- both try to get front mount. (I achieved front mount one time for about .02 seconds before being bucked off; Nelson spent a great deal of time in top half guard.)

Begin in side mount: top person, hold it. You can move only to NS and then back to side mount- nothing else. Bottom person: escape. (Nelson escaped to full guard once, I didn't even get close to getting out. I despise bottom side mount!)

Begin sitting back to back. Spar to first point. Nelson got me two or three times, and I didn't get any, but I made him sweat for it.

Me: (with Nelson in my closed guard and one deep collar grip, the second hovering over his opposite shoulder... his head is tucked in like a turtle in its shell) "Come on, don't you want to pop your head up and see what's going on?"
Nelson: "I *know* what's going on."

Always pleasurable and valuable training to work with Nelson.


------

4:30 basics. Ritchie's back! How's this for a day! H.B. came back for study hall, too! Fortunately I didn't have to work with either of them today.

Nelson came back to bring his daughter to class, and stayed just long enough to show us a triangle setup on a turtled opponent. Interesting, but I didn't embed it quite enough to transcribe. Must get a review next time I see him.

 Just rolling. Ben (purple-belted!) and Luiz.

Noted: when you ask Luiz to kneebar and footlock you, Luiz does not mess around. I literally could not spar him for 15 seconds without being tapped out with a kneebar or footlock. A different setup each time, mind you.  I tapped a dozen times in rapid succession. And this was him "taking it easy".

He showed me one from BEING in closed guard- turning and hooking the elbow under the opposite side foot, pulling it *up*... I struggled a bit, but want to revisit this, as it was quite impressive. Likewise cannot transcribe at this time. I really needed to see it demo'ed on a third party.


-------
Study Hall: okay, way too much valuable information for my tiny brain in one day here. First, Ben was showing us some of his favorite sweeps from bottom half. Since Ben is The King Of Bottom Half, and I can't seem to do a damn thing to stop whatever he wants to do to me from there, this was gold for me. However, my attention was painfully divided by a second pile of gold in the form of Carlos agreeing to play with ankle locks and defense of such.

I didn't get time to play with the sweeps much, but what I recall: you are in bottom half guard, in order to do Ben's favorite sweep, you have you have your body fairly flattened right UNDER the guy. This is terribly counterintuitive to me, but if I can actually LEARN this sweep, maybe I can use it when I'm being INVOLUNTARILY flattened out underneath someone's half guard. Anyway, Ben's using a butterfly hook on the thigh just ABOVE the knee. You have to unwrap your legs from the half guard right as you go to sweep. He's sweeping off to the side as opposed to bringin the person overtop of him.

As soon as I mentioned kneebars, Carlos all like, "***WHO*** is kneebarring you?!!!" and I had to stridently protest Angela's innocence because she's the highest-ranking person I _regularly_  roll with at GB. (I hope he believed me and isn't going to go chew out Angela, as that will result in her rightfully turning around and chewing out *ME*.)

Carlos didn't talk about kneebars a whole lot. We did a couple of them, with the foot-in-the-butt escape. He had me apply one with the leg hugged to my torso and my legs in a triangle-like formation just above the knee. Hip up. He demonstrated how much you are inviting kicks to the face by applying a straight kneebar. He did an escape that is a little beyond my present level, but the gist was that once he got his knee beyond my triangle-hold, all he had to do was stand up and turn around, and suddenly I found myself trapped in a constricting bottom half guard and trying to get away from *him*.

The ankle locks: applying- I need to remember to have the opponent's knee-in-question well-pinned between my own knees/thighs. Applying a pinch here was key. Defending- POST THE OPPOSITE HAND on the mat and fight the pinning knee with the other hand. I kept wanting to grab with the Bad Hand. Once your trapped foot is on the floor, get on top and IMMEDIATELY move your entire body above opponent's chest level. Ummm- do not try to defend by sticking your other foot right into opponent's ankle lock.

Defending both: DO NOT ROLL OUTWARD!!!! Carlos had my leg at one point and asked me what I would instinctively do from here, I went to roll to the outside, he goes, "What ees wrong weeth that?" "Uhh, I'm reaping my own knee." (Even more embarrassing, I was demo'ing reaping the bad knee that is still a little sore from what I suspect was a minor reap injury! Lord! See how hopeless I am?)

There was more, but that's all I'm retaining ATM.